Pit Stop

Fiona left with the baby to visit her folks back home, and it was like Summer got in her hand luggage and took off with her. The Portland rain is persistent and I now spend most of my time in damp shoes working at my laptop alone in coffee shops.

I got some work while I'm here making mood-boards for a film company back home, and I sat at the counter in The Fresh Pot every day for a week and treated it like my office job. Making mood-boards involves finding photos to illustrate the script, then working on the colours until they create the right atmosphere for the plot. This is exactly the kind of work I love, and when the director emailed me after seeing the final draft and said yes, we're done, that's it, I was almost disappointed. It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that I'm tired of being a fugitive and all I really want is to be working again. So when I got an email from an Icelandic client asking if I'd get some video footage here, I said yes, of course I would. But I have to work fast, I explained. My visa is running out and I need to get off the continent.

"We'll send the camera tomorrow," he promised.

"And will you fly me to Iceland afterwards so I can make videos for you there, too?" I asked, confidently, like an American might have done.

"Alright," he said, surprising me, and I had to reassess the direction I wanted to travel in. Iceland? Again? It's been four years since I lived there and I was sure I'd gotten over it and moved on. But suddenly I like the idea of going back, even if it's just for a short trip. I could get in touch with Ursula and see if she still lives downtown. We used to sit out on her balcony in the midnight sun, and I have romantic notions that everything will be exactly the same this time around. But I haven't spoken to her in years now and for all I know she got over it, too, and moved on.

Still, just the thought of Iceland is making up for the stupid yet crushing heartache I'm feeling about leaving the States. I love it here, I've always loved it here, and all of a sudden I feel panicked about going back to Europe. I didn't do enough; I didn't see New Mexico; I never took Manhattan.

"What about a pit stop in New York?" I asked, my new American confidence taking over completely. The windows of the coffee shop had steamed up and people came in off the streets, sheltering in the doorway from the latest downpour of Portland rain. I wondered what Manhattan Island looks like in the sunshine. "Imagine all the great footage I could get for you there," I wrote.

"Alright, Atkins," came the reply, eventually. "Just don't screw this up."